1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to peer chat networks in general, and more particularly, to sharing active content and related information with another peer.
2. Description of Related Art
Instant messaging has recently emerged as a powerful communications model for both business and personal communications. Instant messaging software applications such as Apple Computer's iChat™, America Online's Instant Messenger™, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Messenger™, and others allow users to communicate instantly with other users over a peer network. These applications permit users to track other users that are currently logged in and to send them real time text messages. Users typically maintain a contact or buddy list of preferred contacts that are friends, family, co-workers, or others having common interests, etc. The buddy list allows simple, albeit limited, access to the preferred contacts.
One problem with existing instant messaging applications is that they limit the real time information shared between a user and a contact to, for example, text messages, simple graphic files, and static file transfers. Significantly, current instant messaging applications do not allow users of a peer to directly and easily share information about active content on the peer. The instant messaging applications lack the software architecture to track active content in applications on a common peer, and lack the network communications architecture to share active content with other peers on the network.
Active content includes files that a user is currently accessing, such as music files the user is currently listening to, movies the user is currently watching, and other multimedia content the user is currently experiencing, or the like. Active files can also include other files that are open on the user's computer and in use by an application, such as a multimedia player like Apple Computer's iTunes™. Thus, if a user is listening to a music file on his computer, those contacts he may be currently instant messaging cannot hear that same file at the same time. Likewise, if the user were watching a movie, the instant messaging contacts would not be able to view the movie as well.
At best, in order to share such files, the sender must close the file (or make a copy of it), and then transfer the file via a file transfer function of the instant messaging application or as an attachment to an email sent by an email application, or a user can send a URL to a file if its available on the Internet. This process is not real time sharing of active content, but is essentially copying the static file (or a reference to it) from one computer to another. Further, neither approach provides the recipient with real time updates such as a change in active content, nor do they synchronize the recipient's version with the portion of the active content currently available to the sender, for example, the portion of a multimedia file being viewed by the sender. Moreover, many multimedia files are not well suited for emailing because of their large size.
Furthermore, there is no network architecture to automatically enhance the recipient's use of the user's active content information. Typically, a recipient of a static content file has to undertake additional manual steps to obtain such additional information. Again, if a user is listening to a music file, the user's instant messaging contacts, even those currently in a chat session, would not have direct access to information or meta-data such as the song's name, artist, album art, liner notes, or the like. More generally, there is no way for a one user of an instant messaging application to retrieve supplemental information about the active content in use on another user's computer from a database. Similarly, such instant messaging contacts of the user cannot today easily or directly purchase or preview a copy of active content within the instant messenger.
Another problem with existing messenger applications is that they are typically stand-alone applications that provide only messaging functionality. However, users often multitask between several applications on a single desktop, and typically have an instant messaging application running concurrently with other applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, graphics applications, media applications, and the like. Thus, users must toggle between the instant messaging application to communicate with their contacts and other active applications to perform tasks such as playing back multimedia or surfing web sites, performing word processing, and the like.
Accordingly, there is a need to enhance application and network communication architecture of instant messengers to enable real time active content sharing. The solution should provide supplemental information, real time streaming or previewing, and enable a transaction for the recipient to obtain its own copy of the active content.